Blinded by diabetes, man learns to walk again

Training program guides Oak Lawn resident back toward independence

He got stuck in the small cubby with the pay phone. He faced the wall for a few moments, tapping, before finding his way out.

He navigated the long halls by memory, counting doorways to locate classrooms, and by senses.

Every sound was a clue. The echo of Michels' voice outside the wide stairwell upstairs. The change in his own voice as he got closer to a wall. The pounding music from the gym. The cane's metallic echo against a baseboard radiator.

Even the air held information. Sighted people might never notice, but in the space where one hallway intersects another, there is a slight breeze.

Afterward, back in Michels' office, Juchcinski was drained. "It's like going back to high school," he said. "It's a lot to absorb."

A few days later, he got lost in a storeroom. The door had been left open by mistake. For 25 minutes he tried to find his way out, bumping into desks and chairs, searching for the door. By the time a maintenance man came in and found him, he was sweating from nerves and fear.

He was so angry he wanted to quit. But he didn't.

Six weeks before the session's end, he ventured outside for the first time with Michels.

She taught him how to make his way through the front entrance, with its two automatic doors that had to be activated by standing on a carpet square. He practiced repeatedly, at one point nearly losing his balance on the raised lip between the foyer and the sidewalk.

"Whoa, that sure wakes you up," he muttered.

On Wood Street, he took Michels' arm. She described the route as they walked it, in detail, down to the texture of the grass in the parkway.

The week before his classes were to end, Juchcinski began a day in a funk. "I was having a bad morning," he told Michels. "I said, 'I'm frickin' tired of being blind.'"

But the morning got better. With Michels at his side, Juchcinski walked the entire route that would be his solo — this time, heading north on Wood Street.

He gripped a new cane with an easy-rolling ball for a tip to "shoreline" the edge of the sidewalk, using it as his guide, as he walked to the parking lot up the block. A quick lesson in how to cross it — listen for cars, check for the slant in the sidewalk down to the street — and Juchcinski was ready to take his first walk on his own.

So ready, in fact, that he decided to add another first.

Not only would he walk outside by himself, but he also would keep walking past the route he had practiced and go all the way to the intersection with Taylor Street.

In mid-July, on the last day of his session, Juchcinski stood at ICRE-Wood's front desk, three months of training behind him and his first solo walk ahead of him.

"I'm ready to rock 'n' roll," he said.

"Happy trails," Michels said, smiling.

"Take your time," the security guard called out.

"I have no choice," Juchcinski said.

He went out the door. Down the edge of the sidewalk. Down the ramp. North on Wood Street.

And then, halfway to the parking lot along ICRE-Wood's chain-link fence, tears slipped out from behind his dark glasses.

He was crying with pride. He was walking by himself — slowly, but with confidence. After sniffling a few times and murmuring, "I'll man up," he kept walking.

But he had lost concentration. He veered to the other side of the walk. When his cane touched grass, he knew something was wrong.

"I think I went too far to the left," he murmured. He stepped into the grass and nearly lost his balance. He righted himself, crossed back over the sidewalk again and got to the embedded rubber domes marking the parking lot entrance.

He waited and listened. Then he started crossing the parking lot entrance. But he veered right, and walked into the lot. His cane touched a parked car. He turned around, but the cane got stuck in the wrought-iron fence.

Michels tells students to ask bystanders for help if they need it. Juchcinski did and within a moment was out of the parking lot.

It was time to cross uncharted territory.

He stepped forward on the unfamiliar sidewalk. Methodically, he swept the cane from the center of the sidewalk to where it met dirt at its right edge. Step after step, he followed that shoreline until his cane reached something that felt different — the raised domes marking the end of the sidewalk.

He was at the corner of Wood and Taylor streets, and he was grinning.

He kept grinning even after he collided with a fellow student while walking back. And after he stumbled into a tree and landscaping rocks next to the front door.

In 29 minutes, he had traveled 0.12 miles, and a long way toward independence.

Like 80 percent of students, Juchcinski will go on to a second 13-week session at ICRE-Wood. He is learning more than mobility; he has been pouring his own coffee for months. After graduation, he has another goal: to become a motivational speaker for people with diabetes, offering his blindness as a powerful warning.

He walked into the lobby, where Michels was waiting with a smile and congratulations.

Students are required to check back in at the front desk. Juchcinski stood in front of the security guard.